


this fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone

by axsun



Series: illuminated by moon and fire [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Rise of Kyoshi, The Shadow of Kyoshi
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Pining, YA, but like (i like your voice) it's my personal american uni au, hehe, i feel like this is borderline crack but not gonna tag it that directly, i think in my tags i explain it a bit more plus a link to a drawing i made with more explanations, rangi is Buff, so is kyoshi but neither of them realize it until....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axsun/pseuds/axsun
Summary: "I take off my shirt when exercising,” Rangi says casually, as if she hasn’t slipped out of her t-shirt literal inches from Kyoshi and is busy stuffing it in her locker. “Just cause I don’t like getting it all sweaty. You okay?”Kyoshi swallows.“Yes. I’m fine.”(Rangi drags Kyoshi to the gym. Kyoshi almost combusts.)
Relationships: Kyoshi/Rangi (Avatar)
Series: illuminated by moon and fire [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015338
Comments: 27
Kudos: 119





	this fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone

**Author's Note:**

> this fic (and entire series) takes place in a modern american au.
> 
> content warnings: brief mention of food in the beginning.

If Kyoshi weren’t so tired, she wouldn’t have made out the smirk tugging on Kirima’s lips as Kyoshi staggers out of her room, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“What are you doing so early in the morning?” Kirima says. “And without your hoodie— I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a t-shirt.”

Unconsciously, Kyoshi’s hands drop to her arms to bring them closer to herself. 

“I promised Ran— my friend to go to the gym with her. Do we still have any more granola bars?”

“Topknot?” Kirima asks, and this time Kyoshi hears the smirk in her voice as the sophomore turns to rummage through the pantry, her long braid swinging past her back. “She got you to wake up at 6 AM with no complaints?”

Her hand flashes over her shoulder, and Kyoshi fumbles with the granola bar tossed at her and peels off the wrapper. She goes to refill her water bottle, stopping only briefly to tap her foot three times against the carpet before stepping over onto the tile.

“She— she said something about, ‘what we do without guidance defines who we are,’ I think. She goes to the gym every morning. Wait, why are you up so early? You and Lek usually get up at 7:50 for Data Science.”

“I had to finish a paper,” Kirima says in a way that Kyoshi knows the girl has not slept at all. “Figured I might as well make myself a nice breakfast while I’m at it.”

There’s something vaguely resembling an omelette on the stove that Kyoshi wrinkles her nose at. Kirima elbows her.

“Hey, I’m getting better,” she says. “Are you really going to the gym in your sandals?”

“Please stop hurting me,” Kyoshi says just as the doorbell rings. “Okay, that’s Rangi, I have to go.”

“Tell Topknot I said hello!” Kirima calls cheerfully as Kyoshi shoves the rest of the granola bar into her mouth and nearly sprints out of the kitchen, stopping just to tap her foot three times before crossing over to the carpet and nearly flinging the door open. Rangi stands there in a black t-shirt and shorts, duffel bag slung over her shoulder, and she squints in almost appreciation.

“Well, you’re awake,” Rangi says. “I thought I’d have to drag you out of bed myself. Are you seriously going to the gym in sandals?”

“Good morning to you too,” Kyoshi says, shouldering her drawstring. “I have sneakers in here.”

Rangi nods approvingly. “Then let’s go.”

“Bye Topknot! Bring back our Kyoshi in one piece, please,” is Kirima’s parting call as Kyoshi closes the door, and Kyoshi giggles at the outrage on Rangi’s face.

“How dare she—” she begins, hand reaching out to rip the door open and probably intending to punch Kirima, but Kyoshi stops her. “I can’t believe—”

“You know she’s joking, right?” Kyoshi asks, gently guiding her hand back down and leading her out of her apartment hallway. “Kirima just thinks it’s funny how easy it is for her to rile you up.”

“I tie my hair up to show what I’ve done in life and how my journey has made me who I am today,” Rangi fumes, close to stomping her way down the staircase and into the parking lot of the apartment complex. “Your roommate needs to understand what my hair means for my personal honor.”

“Kirima loves her hair about as much as you love yours,” Kyoshi says, brushing her arm gently against Rangi’s shoulders. “You two might actually bond over it.”

“Don’t push it, Kyoshi,” Rangi says darkly. “I tolerate her because she is one of your roommates and because I love you. Anything else is testing my patience.”

Kyoshi stumbles on the curb and nearly rams into a parked van, stopped only by Rangi grabbing her drawstring and sharply pulling her back.

“You fool!” Rangi snaps. “Don’t do that again, what if there were a car?”

“Sorry,” Kyoshi mumbles, half-dazed and still caught up on what Rangi had said earlier.

 _Because I love you_.

Of course Rangi loves her. They have known each other for over four years at this point. Rangi, who was the first person in the US to speak the same tongue as her. Rangi, who taught Kyoshi to read and write and speak English. Rangi, who stayed over every Tuesday and Thursday evening for study sessions. Rangi, who first noticed Kyoshi’s affinity for mathematics and encouraged Kyoshi to participate in her first AMC. Rangi, who burned her ramen in the microwave constantly and asked Kyoshi through her teeth for help with dinner. Rangi, who got so stupidly upset when she found Kyoshi covered in scrapes and cuts and spent thirty minutes bandaging her up while ranting about her neutral _jing_.

“Have you been to the gym this semester?” Rangi’s voice breaks her out of her thoughts.

“No,” Kyoshi admits. “Rangi, you’ve known me for years, it’s not exactly a priority for me.”

“Well,” Rangi begins, adopting the same tone of voice Kyoshi has heard over years of being reprimanded for not exercising or not eating on time, “exercising routinely can do wonders for one’s health, both physical and mental. With the benefits of the gym membership being included in our tuition, I think you should take full advantage of it.”

“Okay, Rangi,” Kyoshi agrees, knowing wholeheartedly this will probably be the last time she will ever step foot inside a gym. Rangi knows it too, in the way she huffs ever just so slightly, and the edges of Kyoshi’s lips draw up in a slight smile.

They cross the final street and come up on the doors of the gym, a two-story building with floor-to-ceiling windows showing off the equipment inside, and it’s Rangi who strides in as though she’s been doing this for years, Kyoshi following a bit more tiredly. They skype their student IDs at the front desk, and Rangi takes her to the lockers, Kyoshi hopping on one foot in the midst of changing into sneakers.

"I usually just put my bag and clothes in here, inside the lockers is a code I just memorize,” Rangi says, and Kyoshi mimics her movements with a locker two blocks up and three blocks to the left of Rangi’s, frowning a bit as Rangi shifts next to her.

"Clothes? What clothes?” She glances back down and _oh_.

"I take off my shirt when exercising,” Rangi says casually, as if she hasn’t slipped out of her t-shirt literal inches from Kyoshi and is busy stuffing it in her locker. “Just cause I don’t like getting it all sweaty. You okay?”

Kyoshi swallows.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

Kyoshi is not fine. She knows her face is burning up— spirits, her ears are on fire— and she pries her gaze away from Rangi, anywhere but her muscled arms and broad shoulders and lean stomach and round chest—

“Come on,” Rangi says, almost amused, and Kyoshi swallows again, nearly slamming her locker shut on her hand. “Let’s stretch first. Wouldn’t want you getting any cramps, now, would we?”

Cramps are the last thing on Kyoshi’s mind right now. They stretch in a room with mats secured into the ground (Rangi and Kyoshi take neighboring ones) and with a floor-to-ceiling mirror at the front of the room. Into the first set of lunges, Kyoshi glances over and nearly chokes at Rangi sinking into a perfect lunge, resting all her weight on a bent left leg and forming a perfect obtuse triangle with her legs, before rising back up with ease and sinking into a mirroring lunge on her right leg. Kyoshi knows her friend is well-muscled (she has attended enough of her belt tests to see her in action) but she’s never seen her without layers of clothing covering her rippling muscles, and maybe that’s for the best because Kyoshi cannot complete a single set of lunges without losing her balance and falling flat on her back. Which is even more unfortunate, because it provides Kyoshi a perfect view of Rangi from her behind and—

 _T_ _his was a mistake_ , is the only thing Kyoshi can think as she scrambles back on her feet. Not that she doesn’t like being around Rangi, but if Rangi weren’t aware of any attraction Kyoshi might’ve had towards her, there is no way Rangi wouldn’t be aware now. At some point, Rangi orders Kyoshi to drop into planks with her, and Kyoshi promises herself she won’t look at her friend, but that leaves looking straight ahead into the mirror, which means looking right at Rangi’s dipping cleavage, and—

Kyoshi is sweating. They are ten minutes into a stretching session, and Kyoshi is sweating. And she knows it’s not because of the stretching.

 _T_ _his is Rangi_ , Kyoshi reminds herself, pressing the back of her hand to her burning face during a one minute break. _Rangi, my oldest and closest friend. Who I cannot keep goggling at. Who I cannot be in love with._

“Kyoshi, are you okay?”

Kyoshi grunts an affirmation, not trusting herself to look over and see the sight of Rangi, slightly flushed. Rangi continues, Kyoshi only half-listening over the blood roaring in her head.

"I don’t remember your form being this bad before. I used to grind into you--”

At that, Kyoshi chokes, but Rangi continues like nothing happened.

"— over ten minutes of stance training a day, but now you can barely keep up to two minutes.”

"I’ve gotten taller,” Kyoshi says blindly, which is true, but it’s also a sore spot for Rangi, who hasn’t grown since she was 11, earning her a swat on her arm. “Hey—”

And Kyoshi slips up and glances at Rangi, a scowl frozen on her face as Rangi stares back at her, amused and simply watching. She looks—

“What’s next?” Kyoshi forces out, prying her stare away and focusing on her water bottle.

Rangi sets her water bottle down.

"Well,” Rangi says. “More stance training. I think you’ve done enough stretching considering how many times you’ve fallen this morning.”

Stance training is fine. Stance training means focusing on the burning in her legs and abs which means no focusing on Rangi’s perfect abs and Rangi’s perfect arms and Rangi’s perfect legs and Rangi’s perfect chest—

Rangi is attractive. It is a truth, a complete truth. Rangi has a doll face, broad shoulders, and a streamlined body that she says is from years of taekwondo. Kyoshi would be a fool to say anything otherwise. But as attractive as Rangi is, Kyoshi is her best friend first, and to think of Rangi so… physically seems almost demeaning. Rangi trusts Kyoshi enough to dress only in her bra and shorts around her, and Kyoshi has to respect that trust.

 _I_ _can look once every five minutes_ , Kyoshi decides. That seems like a fair trade-off.

After five sets of stances, Kyoshi’s legs give out, and she crumples to the ground, legs quivering from the strain. Rangi squats down next to her, scowling in disapproval.

“We should come back tomorrow,” Rangi says. “To get you whipped back into shape.”

“Please don’t,” Kyoshi says. “We can come back on the weekend.”

“Keep delaying your tests, and you’ll fall into the habit of doing and earning nothing,” Rangi says.

The way she says it makes it sound like some sort of idiom or some sort of life lesson Hei-Ran made her recite when she was two, but Kyoshi can’t quite fathom what it’s supposed to mean for her. Before she can ask, Rangi continues.

“We can take a break for now. I want to see your arms.”

“What?” Kyoshi brings her arms up close to hug her chest instinctively. 

“We’ve been working on our cores and legs this morning,” Rangi says as though it were obvious. “Since it seems you need a break, we can work out our upper body strength with the bench press.”

"Two minute break,” Kyoshi says. "I think I'm going to die."

“One minute,” Rangi counters, and she straightens herself, turning on her heels and stalking away, leaving Kyoshi down on the mats and wishing she could somehow remove her legs and eyes.

True to her word, Rangi comes back exactly a minute later to nudge Kyoshi with her toe. After Kyoshi spends a few minutes moaning and rolling on the ground while Rangi yells at her, she gets to her feet and staggers out of the mat room. Rangi directs her to the weights section of the gym, inhabited by two particularly buff practitioners, and wipes down a padded cushion before motioning for Kyoshi to lay down on it. Reluctantly, Kyoshi does; her knees are bent uncomfortably due to how low the bench is, and she spends some time straightening and maneuvering her legs until they sit at a comfortable angle.

“This is your first time at the bench press, so try lifting only the bar first,” Rangi says. “Hold it like this— flip your hands, space them out a bit more— like that. Try lifting the bar, but keep it aligned with the hook.”

“Like this?” Kyoshi asks, and her arms straighten, the bar lifting easily. It’s a bit light, Kyoshi can honestly barely notice it, and Rangi arches a perfect eyebrow. _Okay, no looking for another five minutes_.

“Was that easy for you?” Rangi asks, and when Kyoshi nods, letting the bar drop back into the hooks, Rangi leans back to bring back two black weights, each of which she sets on a respective bar end. “These are ten pound weights, so it’s twenty pounds total. I don’t want to strain you—”

Kyoshi pushes up with her arms, and the bar goes up easily. “I think I’m okay, I honestly don’t really notice the weight.”

 _Is this supposed to be hard?_ Maybe she’s gotten a faulty set of weights; it would explain why she’s not particularly bothered. Setting the bar back down, Kyoshi almost misses the flicker in Rangi’s eyes, covered up by a scowl.

“Well, I can add more,” Rangi says. “But usually beginners don’t lift this much their first try.”

“I’ll tell you if it gets too much,” Kyoshi promises, and Rangi finally nods, leaning over to pick out two more weights.

The weight becomes noticeable after Rangi sets on the fifth set of weights. Kyoshi has to put in actual effort, focusing on the tension in her chest before moving her arms, and she lets out a huff after setting the bar back down.

"That was a little heavy,” Kyoshi says before catching sight of Rangi’s face. “Are you okay?”

Rangi nods slowly, her face betraying her. She’s completely flushed, cheeks bright red as she chews her lip. She’s resting all of her weight on her right leg, right arm tucked over her stomach and the back of her left hand pressed to her cheek. Kyoshi frowns; Rangi has never let her posture slip into something so poor in her life, and she still hasn’t answered Kyoshi’s inquiry, too intent on looking at something just next to Kyoshi’s face.

“Are you okay?” she repeats.

Rangi startles, eyes blinking before readjusting on Kyoshi’s face, and she clears her throat. “Yes. I’m quite fine, actually. Are— are you okay?”

"I’m fine, Rangi,” Kyoshi says. “I think that was the first time I’ve felt like I was holding anything, honestly.”

Rangi is quiet— too quiet and too red, and Kyoshi reaches out with a tentative hand. “Rangi, are you sure you’re okay?”

Rangi doesn’t respond at first, only reaching down to grip Kyoshi’s hand while fixing her piercing stare on her face. When Kyoshi finally sits up, meeting Rangi at eye-level, she responds.

“Kyoshi, you just pressed 145 pounds,” she says quietly. “On your first try.”

“Oh,” Kyoshi says, trying to understand the importance of that number. She might’ve attended university on a math scholarship, but translating numbers into something tangible is still not within her reach.

“145 pounds,” Rangi repeats, voice strangled for whatever reason. “Kyoshi, I’m 137.”

At that, Kyoshi smiles. “Hey, that means I can probably bench you.”

The thought of lifting Rangi up with her arms makes Kyoshi laugh. She had done it when they were younger, usually when Kyoshi was tired of Rangi giving her an earful after she caught the neighborhood kids tormenting her and Kyoshi just picked her up in a bear hug, restraining Rangi’s arms and ultimately redirecting the conversation, but to pick her up like she did with the barbell seems a bit more—

Hot?

Kyoshi chokes on her laughter just as Rangi seems to collect herself with a firm shake of her head, snapping back into straight-back posture.

"Well,” she says, sounding as though the past minute didn’t happen despite the bright red of her ears, “you’ve proven your competency with your arms. Let’s get back to lower body exercises. How many miles can you run?”

“Rangi, please,” Kyoshi says, her light mood evaporating at the prospect of _running_. “I can lift 145 pounds, that’s enough for today.”

“Oh, it’s never enough, Kyoshi,” Rangi says, pulling her up to her feet before turning away to the staircase up to the track. “Let’s go, _Kohai_. We can take a break after the first two miles.”

Kyoshi sputters, but she follows after her friend, stumbling a bit as the light catches on Rangi’s back muscles. By Kyoshi’s third lap around the track, trailing desperately after Rangi’s perfect jogging form, she’s already forgotten the bench pressing incident, too caught up with the burning in her calves and the rippling of Rangi’s muscles.

Were Kyoshi not so preoccupied, she may have noticed the way Rangi’s gaze lingers on Kyoshi’s arms just a bit too long.

**Author's Note:**

> can we really blame kyoshi? can we really blame her at all? hell, can we even blame rangi? they are Strong. so strong. how lovely


End file.
